1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to five-axis handling of items on a production line.
2. Relation to Prior Art
Production lines generally are structured for maintaining a production item, such as an aircraft engine, a rocket engine, a car, a car engine or a machine of sorts in a fixed orientation. Some production lines provide item rotation in a single axis that is not precise and rigid for precision production. They do not allow complete, convenient and reliably precise access by production workers to all portions of an item as it proceeds to sequential production-line stations. Special time-consuming production-line adaptations are usually required to provide access to difficultly accessible areas of production items. The item orientation of previous production lines also does not provide handling and weighing for final inspection and crating.
There is no known five-axis production-line handler to provide complete, convenient and reliably precise start-to-shipment production-line access and handling of items in a manner taught by this invention.
Examples of most-closely related known but different devices are described in the following patent documents:
NumberDateInventorU.S. ClassU.S. Pat. No. 5,850,928Dec. 22, 1998Kahlman et al.212/285U.S. Pat. No. 4,781,517Nov. 01, 1988Pearce et al.414/590U.S. Pat. No. 4,466,770Aug. 21, 1984Peroutky414/751U.S. Pat. No. 4,082,191Apr. 04, 1978Whittingham212/59 RU.S. Pat. No. 3,987,905Oct. 26, 1976Dechantsreiter212/18U.S. Pat. No. 3,887,080Jun. 03, 1975Wilson212/11